


Saber of Destiny

by Celestial_Alignment



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Crossover, Time Travel, crossover star trek/wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25606279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celestial_Alignment/pseuds/Celestial_Alignment
Summary: The Enterprise is investigating weird readings from the Guardian of Time. Then a severed hand pops out holding a lightsaber. Time starts falling apart. Star Trek/Star Wars crossover
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

“Captain’s log, Stardate 2264.4. The _Enterprise_ has been sent to investigate a series of strange energy readings emanating from the planet of the Guardian of Time. There has been no activity for the past two years, ever since our last mission here when we had the unfortunate incident of a drug-induced crewman passing through time and changing history. It has since been restored, those logs can be accessed in the archives. Up until a few weeks ago, there wasn’t the slightest time ripple from this world. Lieutenant Uhura and Ensign Chekov have been on the planet’s surface for the past six hours recording the rapid images of unfamiliar history, which the Guardian has been showing without explanation. I will be beaming down momentarily to check in on the landing party’s progress…”

The PADD was shut off and handed off to an ensign.

“The away team’s got everything under control, Jim…” Dr. McCoy’s Southern drawl eased out with a soothing cadence that gave away his natural bedside manner. Or the psychiatric training.

“I’m fine, Bones,” he managed to say it convincingly light as he stood from the command chair. “You’re welcome to join me if you like.”

He knew the good doctor often opted out of beaming anywhere when given the choice, but at this moment he had underestimated his friend’s concern.

“I could use the fresh air,” Bones smirked a little, a brow quirking.

He couldn’t talk the doctor out of it and together they reached the transporter room, equipped with the usual field accoutrements of phaser and communicator, a medical tricorder slung across the lanky doctor’s chest. Spock was there beside Mr. Kyle at the transporter controls. 

The captain was halfway to the transporter platform when he saw that Spock, too, had his field equipment.

“Going somewhere, Spock…?”

“I request joining the away team, Captain. In our last encounter with the Guardian, I made the error of not recording as much of the shown history as I could have. I wish to remedy that.”

“And _I_ wish I was recording just now so that I could play _that_ back forever…” McCoy murmured. “Spock, did I just hear you say the ‘E’ word?”

Spock regarded the doctor coolly, a single sharp brow raising. “Perhaps you should consider a hearing examination, Doctor.”

“You’re not going to repeat it, are you?”

Kirk chuckled and waved Spock to follow as he headed for the platform. “You’re on the away team, Mr. Spock.”

Spock did not deign to look to McCoy as he stepped onto the platform with the other men. Once they were in place, Mr. Kyle stood at the ready for the captain’s command.

“Energize.”

When they rematerialized on the planet’s surface, it was exactly as Kirk remembered it. Bleak ruins as far as the eye could see, no distinguishing architecture aside from generic pillars in pieces, and that low, melancholy howl of the wind through the ruins that haunted his dreams to this day. 

Now he felt the regret in coming here, the fear of returning to that old pain. But it was the pain that motivated him to face it. The more something frightened him, the more determined he was to face it. He didn’t realize he had froze there, his eyes on the asymmetric opening of the Guardian. A hand touched his shoulder.

“I’m alright, Bones…” But McCoy was standing in front of him.

It was Spock’s hand on his shoulder, and the Vulcan’s small gesture of concern had a breath rattle out of the captain.

“I’m alright…” he repeated more quietly, for Spock’s benefit.

Only his two closest friends knew what this place truly meant to him. The official report had declared that they had stepped back in time, to Earth’s 1930s America, where they had to ensure the death of a powerful activist to save their collective future, and millions of lives in the process.

What the report didn’t say, was that Jim Kirk had fallen in love with her. And very deliberately made the choice to let her die. Not a day passed that he didn’t think of her.

Uhura and Chekov were camped out rather comfortably in front of the Guardian, Uhura sitting on a sleeping bag on the flat ground, her tricorder in her lap. When she saw her superior officers materialize, she moved to stand, but Jim waved at her.

“At ease, Lieutenant…” He stood beside her and stared with wonder at the images that were passing by, almost in the blink of an eye in the mouth of the Guardian.

It was all so strange. Lights and colors he had never seen, flashes of war and celebration, things that Earth shared, but the two were beyond compare. Strange new worlds, indeed.

“What is this?” he asked in awe.

“The Guardian didn’t give any information on it, sir,” Uhura said. “Only that it was hundreds of galaxies away from our own. We have been recording it, and what few images we have been able to play back, it’s been fascinating to watch, to witness things that happened long before our galaxy even existed as we know it…”

She was getting to her feet to stand shoulder to shoulder with the captain, to show him the tricorder images. She slowed down the recording to show colorful parades of alien species, confetti and banners.

“They’re so different and yet so familiar to us…” She was smiling. “And so far removed in space and time…”

Spock was watching over her shoulder with indifference to hide the curiosity that Kirk knew was bubbling in that eternally curious Vulcan brain of his.

“Were you able to record anything beyond images, Lieutenant?” asked Spock. “Language or any other useful data?”

“I have, Commander,” she said without a beat, her delicate nails flipping a control on the tricorder with mastery. “There were too many languages to begin recording, so I connected to the ship’s computer in order to best hone in on the most common language. It identified one above the others, and is in the process of working through a translation. With enough accumulated data, we should be able to understand the history we are recording.”

“Another thing, Keptin,” Chekov added from nearby, waving his own tricorder. “Ve have recorded endless information including new types of energy ve have never even seen in our own galaxy! Mostly it is energy ve recognize, but there are so many new things!”

“I don’t like the looks of it…” McCoy said, his arms folded as he frowned at the Guardian’s mouth. “All I see is death.”

When the captain looked again, the images were aflame. Flashes of light, explosions, death, terror, marching soldiers that were eerily akin to the fascists and Nazis of Earth’s history. All images too fast to fully comprehend. A chill ran through him.

“History is never bloodless, Bones…” he murmured. “Well, whatever we record here will make for a very interesting study for the archaeologists and—”

“Jesus Christ!” McCoy barked and danced backwards, stumbling right into Spock, who caught his weight without so much as blinking. Bones was staring down, his eyes ready to pop out of his skull. Kirk followed his gaze to the dirt ground where something had apparently flown out of the Guardian’s mouth.

It was a human hand. And it was clutching something.

Spock, still holding the doctor up by the shoulders, looked down at the hand. “Fascinating…”

No sooner had he said that the ground began to quake, nearly knocking them all off their feet. The ruins cracked, disturbed for the first time in perhaps a millennia. The rumble went so deep it felt as though it was reaching them from the core. The winds were gusting wildly now, throwing the dirt into dervishes. 

“Earthquake?” Kirk shouted over the noise.

Spock was stumbling, but holding fast his tricorder as he squinted through to dust to read it. “It is not a natural seismic occurrence, Captain!”

The Guardian was beginning to flash rapidly. Something felt very wrong. Jim didn’t dare move too near for fear that another jolt of the earth would throw him in.

“Guardian! What’s happening?”

It lit up, the images in its mouth fading in and out, and its powerful voice easily carried over the roar of the planet. “ _Something has been lost from where it belongs. All of time is darkening in its void. The ripple of that altered past will reach here in two of your hours. All will cease to exist. Pockets of time are still intact from then to here, soon to disappear…_ ”

“I didn’t do anything this time!” Bones screamed, holding onto Spock for dear life as the ground rolled under them.

“ _A fluke in time, a circumstantial accident has removed it from there and brought it here._ ”

“What—that hand?” cried Kirk.

“ _The object it bears. A token of destiny._ ”

Together, Spock and McCoy lowered to their knees around the hand, tricorders out. Jim, after helping Uhura to support herself against a shaking rock, stumbled his way to his friends to drop beside them.

“The hand’s human, Jim!” McCoy shouted. “More or less!”

“And the… _thing_ it’s holding?” 

“Unknown, Captain,” said Spock. “Tricorder sensors are picking up a resonance frequency within. There is a crystal inside of this device…”

“A tool or a weapon?”

“Unknown.”

“Guardian!” Jim tried to look at the entity, but too much dirt was blowing into his eyes and he had to shield his face with his hand. “Guardian, is this the token that needs to be returned?”

“ _This token is integral to the universe as you know it. The events that it took part in created the ripples that became the waves that reached as far as the galaxies between there and here. If it is returned to where it belongs, all will be restored as you had known it._ ”

“Same barn dance, different barn!” McCoy growled. “I knew we shoulda stayed away from anything to do with time!”

“Can you show us where it belongs? Is it possible for us to replace it, the same way we had traveled back before?”

“ _It is possible. But I can only show you time, where you go is your choice. Behold and prepare to jump through, travelers…_ ”

“Jim, how can we possibly know when to jump through?!” McCoy was practically screaming now, his alarm half way carried off in the gale. 

“Lieutenant Uhura, your tricorder!” Spock suddenly called out, meeting her halfway just as the earth jumped again under their feet. They were speaking, their tricorders together, and Jim had to stumble nearer to join in.

“Spock!”

“The resonance of that object, Captain! I can use its unique signature to narrow down a period in time in which we can attempt!”

“How narrow are we talking, Spock?”

“Within a century, perhaps.”

That was… broad. But it was their best shot. “Let’s do it!”

He picked up the object and had to shake the severed hand from it. Looking at it close up, he could see where it was severed cleanly at the wrist, it seemed to be neatly cauterized as well. It was gruesome, but there was no time to think about it.

One good shake and the hand fell off, curled on the ground, empty. Kirk held the object as Spock scanned it, matching its frequency to Uhura’s recordings. It worked.

All they had to do now was wait for the correct point in time to arrive in the images that passed in the Guardian’s maw and jump through.

“Spock, Bones, you’ll come with me! Uhura, Chekov, try to contact the _Enterprise_ to stand by to beam us the hell off this unstable planet! If this is successful, we’ll be back in minutes!”

“Aye, Keptin!” Chekov shouted back over the gale.

“Almost, Captain!” Spock announced. “…Now!”

Together, the three of them jumped inside.


	2. Chapter 2

What they stepped out into was dead silence, electrified with the aftermath of chaos. There were small flames dotting a vast room, trickling from the ceiling like fiery snow, bodies of red-armored humanoids scattered and piled on the ground, a cocktail of burnt smells in the air, and what appeared to be the bottom half of a body sitting on a throne against the backdrop of space… The top half unceremoniously at its own feet. It wasn’t human, it was too large, and it seemed decrepit. The bottom half of the body thumped onto the floor.

Outside of the windows were flashes, what appeared to be a space battle in progress, and somewhere far away, alarms were blaring. By the droning beneath their feet, they knew they were on some sort of ship. Whatever ship they were on, there seemed to be a massive part of it in flames slowly drifting away. In the midst of the carnage, McCoy immediately took out his tricorder, and it whined in the silence. He moved quickly when it detected life signs.

“I got one still alive, Jim,” Bones moved to the nearest body, lowering onto a knee.

It appeared to be a human, a young man, clad in black, a mane of hair equally dark. McCoy trailed the bioscanner over him.

“He’s just unconscious… mild concussion, I think, but otherwise healthy, s’far as I can tell…”

Kirk squinted around the room. “Can we ascertain if we’re in the place to return this… token?”

Spock, all the while, was taking a slow turn around the room, delicately walking around the corpses and the debris, his head bowed over his own tricorder. “No matching resonance to the token, Captain… Perhaps the absence of it means that this is where it must be returned.”

“I got a match, though…” McCoy said quietly. “Not to that token thingamajig, but… to the hand.”

“Is it his?” said Kirk. “He looks like he has two hands right now, Doctor…”

That wasn’t to say this individual wasn’t destined to lose it later.

“No, not his…” McCoy was shaking his head, frowning at the readings. “But there are some DNA matches… A relative, I’d say.”

“Then maybe he can help us find who this belongs to…” Kirk rose to his feet and wandered towards his first officer, who was looking intently into his tricorder. “Spock, can the sensors detect any technology similar to this token?”

“Scanning now, Captain…” Spock said quietly. He froze, a hand slowly touching at his temple.

“Spock? You alright?”

“I’m fine, Captain…” he blinked it away, whatever it was, and looked back to his sensor.

Before Kirk could push the matter further, a new voice rang out in the chamber, drawing their collective attention.

“Drop your weapons, Rebel Scum!” 

It was another relatively young man in a stark uniform, red hair cut short and parted in what was a familiar look of disciplined authority. A universal look, apparently. He was pointing a firearm of sorts at them. Apparently Uhura’s translator worked.

Captain Kirk slowly raised both hands for the newcomer to see. “We’re not your enemies…” he said calmly.

“I would kill you now if you didn’t have information vital to the First Order!”

His voice shook as much as his hand, perhaps not out of fear, but obvious stress. After all, there were hunks of space vessels flying by the window, and ongoing alarms screaming in all directions. His eyes kept shifting to the unconscious one.

“Once we’ve bled you dry of all you know, you will be executed for the assassination of the Supreme Leader! Although I might congratulate you for killing the _mighty_ Kylo Ren…” There was clear disdain on his sour features as he looked to the unconscious man.

“If this is who you’re talkin’ about, he isn’t dead!” McCoy corrected gruffly and pointed to the unconscious young man. 

The ginger’s eyes widened, his lip quivering. He shifted the weapon from Kirk’s face to the unconscious one, ready to shoot, and Kirk took his chance. He drew his phaser and fired, and the ginger dropped in a dull thud, the firearm clattering from his hand. He was stunned. Kirk let out a breath and looked to his away team. Spock quirked a brow at him.

“Captain… We may be corrupting in the timeline further. The Guardian referred to this as a ‘pocket in time.’ If we are at a point in time after the initial rupture, this reality is danger of disappearing at any moment if we do not restore the token where it belongs…”

“Never mind time disappearing, what about this vessel we’re on?” McCoy threw his hand towards the view that showed absolute destruction. “We’re on a sinking ship, Jim.”

“Question is… How can we tell if we’re _before_ or _after_ the point we need to be at?” Kirk looked at the device in his hand, then the unconscious one called Kylo Ren. “He’s our best bet for answers… If anything he can tell us what this is.”

“Do we have any reason to think he’ll be more friendly than that one?” McCoy nodded to where the ginger was sprawled on his back.

“No… But keep your phasers on stun. See if you can wake him, Doctor.”

McCoy sighed and reached into his field med kit. “Alright… I’ll use what seems to be a safe dosage based on his bioscan…”

The hypo was fixed and brought to the unconscious one’s shoulder, but before it even made contact, Kylo Ren jolted awake with a sharp gasp. He blinked confusedly, looking to McCoy, black hair concealing most of his face.

“You're alright, son, just take it easy…." McCoy said softly. 

Kylo Ren held still, like a cautious animal, eyes wide and passing slowly over each of the Starfleet members. Then to the unconscious ginger officer. Now they could see the scar across the right side of his face, along his brow and cheek.

"He’s alive," Kirk reassured him. "He's just stunned. We're friends, we don't mean any harm—"

"You don't belong here…" The voice that came out of Kylo Ren was surprisingly deep. Alarmingly calm.

They stepped back to allow the man to get onto his feet, and he easily towered over them all. He still seemed dazed, moving slowly with heavy steps and looking around the aftermath of whatever carnage had happened in this room. There was something attached to his belt, something that was roughly the same shape as the token but markedly different. It looked like the hilt of a sword, sans blade.

"No, we don't belong here… We're looking for the owner of this…" he held up the token in plain sight.

If he didn't know any better, he thought Ren's eyes dilated at the sight of it. 

“That lightsaber is mine." A black gloved hand reached out expectantly.

Kirk immediately felt his hackles rise and he saw the same caution when he glanced between his away team.

"Lightsaber. Fascinating…” Spock said coolly. “How can we be certain that it belongs to you?"

Kirk was ready to echo the question when the token flew from his hand, snapping into the grip of that black glove.

Great, telekinesis. 

Kylo Ren hardly regarded them as he examined the device in both hands. "This one is different… she took the pieces of the other one…" he was speaking to no one, his eyes drifting to the starfield out the window, his hands closing so tightly around the object they were shaking.

"Captain…" Spock was close at Kirk's side, whispering. "I believe it is safe to assume that we are at the wrong point in history…"

"I believe you're right…" 

Kylo Ren turned to them again. "How did you get this lightsaber? It's newer than it's supposed to be… How were you able to take this out of time?"

Something about every syllable out of this young man's mouth made it more and more obvious that his intentions were far from good. He spoke with entitlement. The idea of time travel didn’t spook this person, and Kirk decided that the Prime Directive and temporal regulations were not worth clinging to here. The jig was up that they were time travelers.

" _How_ we did it might be harder to explain than _why_ …” Kirk said with patience that masked his caution. “We're on a mission to restore it to where it belongs. I think you can help us."

The ship shuddered violently around them and floor beneath them began to keel. Kylo Ren widened his stance but hardly moved, his dark eyes flashing to the stars again.

"I have more pressing matters…"

He seemed prepared to dismiss them, taking the item with him. Regardless of the pleading in McCoy’s eyes, Kirk stepped towards Ren.

“We have _pressing matters_ of our own and we’re not leaving that… _lightsaber_ with you. This point in time—here and now—will disappear at any moment!”

Kylo Ren inhaled slowly, his broad chest expanding, his eyes still on the stars. “Good. Let it all disappear. It should have ended with Luke Skywalker in the first place.”

“Captain…” Spock said softly. “We must try a different time…”

Kirk nodded his acknowledgment to his first officer, though he did not take his eyes from the dower profile of Kylo Ren. His hand tightened around his phaser as he kept it at his side.

“You’re not just erasing your own reality. You’re erasing reality across _galaxies_. I’ll ask you once to return that lightsaber to me—”

His throat pinched shut, the floor dropping beneath his feet—no, he was levitating up, something invisible closing his trachea. He choked, his vision turning black and his phaser dropping from his hand. He could just make out the dark shape of Kylo Ren, a hand extended towards him, fingers curled. Someone fired a phaser, a red blade with a fiery hilt appeared from nowhere, and knocked the phaser blasts way, one after another in a rapid succession.

The entire room suddenly flashed white, and Kirk dropped to the floor in a heap, wheezing and gasping for air. A pair of arms on each side of him was pulling him to his feet, and he leaned heavily into them. It was Spock and McCoy.

“Jim! Are you okay?”

“Fine, Bones...” He rasped, tugging his gold tunic straight. Slowly, he leaned down to pick up his phaser, coughing painfully.

Kylo Ren was sprawled on the ground, black hair thrown over his eyes.

“What the hell happened…?”

“He was choking you with some form of telekinesis, Captain,” Spock said simply as he ambled to the unconscious man. He picked up the token lightsaber.

“I guessed as much, thank you, Mr. Spock…” Kirk rubbed at his aching throat.

“We were given an impromptu demonstration of what he had referred to as a ‘lightsaber’,” Spock continued with a spark of scientific excitement. “A blade constructed of what appears to be a sort of plasma, energized by the crystal whose resonance I had picked up on the sensors…” he weighed the token lightsaber in his hand. “He has quick skills and reflexes and was able to deflect our phaser fire. Even with the steady-beam phaser fire, the lightsaber’s deflections disrupted the stability of the beams.”

“We couldn’t even distract him from his chokehold on you, Jim,” McCoy was sweating, still clutching his phaser. “What kind of God damned space hoodoo is this?!”

“It seems to be a culture with highly sophisticated training in telepathic abilities beyond any—”

“Spock, later…”

“Of course, Captain… I simply adjusted my phaser’s stun to a wide spread so that he could not deflect it and he was thus rendered unconscious.”

“Nice guy, that Kylo Ren…” McCoy grumbled, glancing around at the corpses that still decorated the room around them. “If he did all this, I don’t wanna know…”

The alarms that screamed throughout the ship suddenly silenced. The debris outside began to flake away into nothing.

“This pocket in time is disintegrating…” said Spock.

And as the room around them began to disappear, the Guardian of Forever yawned into existence before them. Kirk nudged his officers through before jumping in himself. They stepped back out into the howling squall of the planet, Uhura and Chekov running to meet them.

“Vell?” yelled the Russian. “It doesn’t seem like it vorked, Keptin!”

“It was the wrong time,” Kirk shouted back over the noise. “Spock! Can we be a little more precise on where we’re jumping?”

“Possibly, Captain… We can continue to follow the DNA of the hand here…”

“Do you think it belongs to that Luke Skywalker person that Kylo Ren mentioned?” McCoy huddled in close.

“That would be my assumption, Doctor,” said Spock. “It would perhaps be ill advised to follow the weapon’s resonance in our next attempt, as we need to arrive at the time when it ceased to exist in the timeline, or perhaps moments before its disappearance. Therefore, we should train our tricorders to hone in on the DNA we had collected of both this hand—which may or may not be of a Luke Skywalker—and Kylo Ren. Additionally, I have surmised from the tricorder readings that we were approximately thirty years too late. I cannot be more precise than that, I’m afraid.”

“Kylo Ren did say the lightsaber was 'too new',” Jim commented. “He recognized it, but must have only known it after it had aged a bit.”

“You mean we get to go back to before Kylo Ren probably existed?” McCoy sighed and looked gratefully to the stars. “Thank God.”

The wild wind stopped suddenly. The dust of the planet trickling down in the now dead air, leaving them all in an eerie silence, save for the deep thrum of the Guardian. They all looked around wide-eyed before their attention settled on the captain.

“That can’t be a good sign,” Kirk said. “We need to try again. Now. Spock?”

“Yes, Captain…” Spock was leaning over his tricorder again, wandering towards the Guardian.

 _“Time is waning_ ,” the Guardian announced. “ _After the time of the fracture, there are fewer points to choose from. You must go further back if you are to restore what must be._ ”

Using the recordings, Spock was able to track the images that the Guardian played back for them, watching closely and timing it. At Spock’s signal, they jumped through again.


	3. Chapter 3

They appeared in a dark corridor of carved rock, the only source of light was from above through small holes. There was a constant, loud hiss somewhere that sounded distinctly like steam exhaust.

Jim walked cautiously ahead, realizing only as he started moving that there was metal grating under their feet. With one slow step in front of the other, Spock and McCoy just a step behind him, he didn’t yet make a sound as he assessed their surroundings. Both tricorders began whirring as the science officer and doctor made their own observations.

“Captain, there are thousands of life form readings all around us in this structure…” said Spock.

“Human?” asked Kirk.

“Unknown.”

Jim looked curiously at the walls around them. It seemed to be made of rock, but it was sculpted, structured. The captain stopped, his hands out to halt his friends.

“Listen!” he whispered, looking towards the rock ceiling. “Do you hear that?”

“Machinery,” Spock said. “Perhaps a factory…”

They moved forward again, the sounds getting louder—metallic clanging, rolling belts and engines, hissing heat. Suddenly there was a clamor ahead of them, and from around the corner came a horde of bug-like creatures, veined and clear wings twitching frantically on their backs. Kirk drew his phaser, but he was pulled to the wall and out of the path of the stampede by Spock. The creatures were as tall as the Starfleet personnel, and hardly gave them a bewildered glance in passing as they continued on their way, clearly fleeing something. After a few moments the corridor was empty, but they could hear the echoes of more creatures clicking and growling elsewhere, and somewhere in the noise, the distinct sound of humans.

It sounded like someone was in trouble, and Kirk wasn’t about to stand around and wait. He needed only to motion to his friends, and the three of them took off running towards the sounds, phasers drawn.

“You are going the wrong way!” a human voice called out just ahead of them, around the corner.

There were computerized beeps.

“I’m not the brainless bucket here, you glob of grease! Didn’t I say we should have stayed with the ship? Oh, we shouldn’t be here…”

When Kirk rounded the corner, he went ass up as he tipped over something round, flopping to the grating on the floor with a clang. The thing whistled loudly and a small arm projected out of it, the tiny clawed grip sparking with electricity. It had a dome shaped head on a short, cylindrical body, painted in silver and blue. Lights flashed on the face of it as he rolled towards them on three wheels. Not far behind was a humanoid robot of dull silver, shuffling rapidly but with little grace, arms stiffly flailing.

“Oh no!” said the humanoid robot. “Please, don’t shoot!” The robot froze with its arms up, its unblinking glowing eyes looking at them. “We’re captured. I knew it.”

“You all right, Jim?” McCoy was pulling Jim back onto his feet.

“I’m fine…” Kirk was all too aware of that undignified spill, but he could still hear the chaos happening somewhere farther down the corridors. He looked to the robot that was able to speak and lowered his phaser. “We’re lost, too… But we’re looking for someone. My name is Captain James T. Kirk.”

“Hello. I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations. This is R2-D2.”

“This is my science officer Spock, my Chief medical officer Dr. McCoy. What... What planet is this? What’s going on?”

“You are on the planet Geonosis. Everyone was explicitly ordered not to be here, and not to leave the ship, and yet here we are doing everything we were told _not_ to. They’re all quite mad, if you ask me, I don’t even know why they bother to keep me around.”

“Y’know, Jim, I think this is one robot I could like,” McCoy looked to Spock with smugness arching his brow.

The small droid tootled.

“ _You_ are the defective one,” said C-3PO, “you miniaturized trash compactor!”

The small droid squawked and finally retracted its electrified arm that looked like a tiny cattle prod. It turned and began to roll back the way it came. C-3PO sighed—even though he didn’t seem to have lungs—and he shuffled quickly after him.

“We just _came_ from there! Wait!”

Kirk had to skip to catch up to them, Spock and Bones close behind.

“We’re here looking for someone who is familiar with uh… Lightsabers?”

The small robot whistled and beeped, swiveling its domed head to look back at them as it continued to roll forward.

“Oh… yes, perhaps you’re right, Artoo… Are you also looking for Master Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

“No… We’re looking for a Luke Skywalker.”

The small robot let out a low boop and a few squelches.

“I’m afraid we don’t know any _Luke_ Skywalker, Captain Kirk…”

Artoo turned suddenly and began to roll away, tootling rapidly.

Spock was walking beside C-3PO now. “Then you are familiar with the name Skywalker, correct?”

“That is correct. Why, he is the Maker, of course!”

“Don’t tell me you’re talkin’ about God…” McCoy chimed in.

“God? I’m afraid the concept is too vast and differs from system to system, but in the basest meaning of the word, perhaps it is not completely incorrect. Master _Anakin_ Skywalker built me, you see. _He_ is my Maker.”

“Does he have any relatives who might have the name of Luke? A father, brother?”

“I’m afraid not… His sole relative, to my knowledge, was his mother, who has recently passed. Master Ani is quite alone in the universe, it would seem. Where is that stupid little droid going?!”

Artoo made a sharp turn down another hallway. The mechanical sounds were getting louder and louder, reverberating through the very walls.

“What is this structure?” Spock addressed the silver robot.

“Apparently it is a droid foundry…. It gives me the creeps, if you ask me.”

“A droid? Like you?” asked McCoy.

“Certainly not! Allegedly, they are building battle droids here. I am a humble protocol droid, and one of a kind thanks to Master Ani…”

“Where can we find this… Anakin Skywalker?” Jim asked. “Or even this Odie—”

“ _Obi_ -Wan Kenobi,” Spock said helpfully.

“This Kenobi… person…” Jim continued. “It’s deadly important that we find someone who knows about lightsabers.”

“I believe there are many Jedi who could assist— Oh dear.”

The two droids had stopped and Jim immediately saw what they were looking at. There were bodies all over the floor, mostly in pieces, fragments of what looked to be limbs and clear insect wings of massive proportion.

“Those insectoid fellas we saw,” said McCoy, quirking a brow as he looked to the read out on his tricorder. “I’m sure you don’t need my prognosis to know they’re all very dead.”

“What killed them?” Jim looked at the carnage, horrified.

“A blade of some sort…” Spock answered, kneeling slowly over what appeared to be the entire left side of the creature that was cut cleanly down the middle. “Cauterized instantly. Identical injury to the hand that we had found. Extremely fresh.”

“Easily the wounds one might see from something called a lightsaber…” added McCoy.

“Just like Kylo Ren was wielding,” replied Spock.

Jim looked at the token in his hand, avoiding the button that was so prominent on its side. “This might mean we’re on the right track…”

Even as he said it he noticed the closed door ahead of them. Artoo was already there, at the side of it. Jim could hear some sort of buzzing circuitry, clicking, and when he leaned over the little droid, he saw that something was extended out of him and plugged into the control panel of the door. It clicked and the door lifted open, sliding upward.

The noise that came through was almost deafening, endless echos of clanging metal, welding heat, the searing smell in the air. Jim leaned over the threshold of the door. 

Looked like this was where the walkway ended in a sheer drop.

It was a chamber larger than the eye could see, endless conveyor belts and moving parts of mechanical arms working a complex assembly line, molten metal pouring this way and that. Occasionally, a nearly human-sized insectoid could be seen in the distance buzzing around. On the conveyor belts were rows of hundreds and thousands of robots—or droids, as they seemed to call them here. Seemingly inactive during their production.

“Oh my goodness!” C-3PO stood beside him, looking out over the endless chasm of a factory. “Shut me down! Machines making machines! Huh. How perverse.”

The self-proclaimed protocol droid seemed morbidly curious about it all. For being machines themselves, C-3PO and R2-D2 were exhibiting some characteristics that were hilariously close to emotions, and Jim was genuinely looking forward to discussing this with Spock later.

“Jim, look!” McCoy’s voice was right behind Jim in the small doorway, but his arm extended past the captain to point downward and in the distance.

Jim saw it as soon as McCoy pointed. Something blue and glowing, whirling around, cutting through machines and insectoids, and being wielded by an agile young man in a dark cloak. Not unlike Kylo Ren. He was ducking, jumping, dodging all manner of lethal mechanisms as if these conveyor belts had been constructed to elaborately kill. He had remarkable speed and reflexes.

“There is Master Ani!” said C-3PO. “Hm. I wonder what happened to Senator Amidala…”

“He needs help!” said Jim. He knew he couldn’t just sit there. “Is there a way to shut down these assembly lines? The whole factory if we have to?”

“Captain!” Spock’s hand on Jim’s arm, gently but firmly guiding him back away from the door. “I must remind you that we cannot interfere in any happenings here…”

There was a metal clank as R2-D2 knocked into the back of C-3PO’s legs.

“Oh! Careful, Artoo… I almost fell…” C-3PO teetered on the edge of the door. 

Jim looked out into the factory again. He had lost sight of Anakin Skywalker, he couldn’t even see the glow of the lightsaber anymore. “If he dies, we have to let it happen…” He was reminding himself, his jaw tight.

Spock’s eyes were fixed on him. Jim managed a nod to him. He hadn’t forgotten Edith. He wouldn’t let it change what needed to be done, but it left him feeling sick.

Artoo was beeping again, and again he nudged C-3PO—right off the ledge, and the protocol droid fell screaming.

“Dear God, this robot is a sociopath!” McCoy was stepping back from R2-D2, practically hugging th wall as if he was next.

Something extended on each side of the little droid and jets fired. With a cheerful whistle, he took off flying into the chaos of the foundry, disappearing amongst the ever-moving machinery and the flames. Jim leaned forward, looking down the sharp drop from the walk way.

“So much for help from those robots… We need to find a way down there… If there are people in this factory, and if they survive, we need to find them. Come on!”

They took off running away from the open door, back through the corridors full of corpses, dark and labyrinthine. Eventually they came to winding steps carved in stone, following them downward and continuing towards the deafening sounds of the factory. They came to a running stop at another open door that looked into a different section of the factory.

McCoy was huffing and leaned on his knees. “Haven’t these people ever heard of elevators? Or ladders?”

“They are flying insect creatures, doctor, they have no need for either.”

“Thank you, Spock.”

Not too far ahead of them, by pure fate, was Anakin on a different assembly line.

“Spock! Bones!”

As soon as Jim called their attention, they watched as Anakin was clotheslined by a robotic arm to the face, knocked onto his back just in time for a massive stamping mechanism to come down on his right arm. Instinctively Jim started forward, but he halted himself before Spock had the need to stop him this time. Anakin was still very much alive, but he was pinned by his arm on the conveyor belt. A right arm.

“Bones, that hand we found… Was it a right hand?”

“It was,” McCoy said gravely, his face dripping with sweat. “Jim, he’s gonna die! We gotta do something!”

“Spock, what if his was the hand we found? What if this isn’t supposed to happen and we need to save his life?”

“The Guardian said the lightsaber needed to be returned. Not that a life needed to be saved…” Spock betrayed no emotion, but his eyes were hard, his pointed brows furrowed as he intently watched the conveyor belt move away. 

Anakin was being carried to what appeared to be butcher knives the size of a shuttlecraft chopping down. Jim felt lightheaded, his nerves fraying with each second. The young man was rolling and dodging with perfect instinct, narrowly avoiding getting his legs chopped clean off, and each narrow escape allowed Jim a tentative breath of relief. Finally, one of the choppers came down on his hand—he was free. Both hands intact. As soon as he was on his feet, Jim deflated a little with a full exhale.

“Captain!” Spock raised his phaser and Jim followed his gaze.

Another humanoid was approaching, armored and flying through the factory with a jet pack. They watched from afar as this armored person landed on the conveyor belt, drawing a gun and aiming it at Anakin. More droids appeared, a new kind that rolled from nowhere, unfolding with weapons aimed. Anakin was surrounded and led away by the droids. 

“At least he’s alive,” Jim said quietly, backing away from the doorway before they were spotted. 

“And with both hands still attached,” McCoy added. “Do you think we’re in the right place this time?”

“There’s only one way to find out… We need to find where they’re keeping Anakin Skywalker.”

* * *

It was roughly an hour of wandering and hiding before they came to what could only be a holding cell for prisoners. Simply put, it was a carved out cave with one electronic door. Standing guard outside of it was one of those insectoid creatures. One shot of a phaser and it buckled into a heap.

The noise brought a face to appear at the small window of the door. It wasn't Anakin, though. Kirk paused, his phaser in hand, face to face with a young beautiful human woman.

"I demand an audience with Count Dooku," her tone was harsh. "You cannot keep me or Master Kenobi as prisoners, the Jedi council and the Chancellor will not stand for this!"

“I think we came to the wrong cell, Jim…” McCoy mumbled beside him.

"We are not affiliated with anyone by the name of Count Dooku," Spock said simply while Jim mustered a reply.

“My name is Captain James Kirk… We’re looking for someone.”

"Padme…" another voice spoke softly from within the cell. 

She moved aside enough for them to see the young man behind her. That was Anakin. His voice was soft, but when his eyes met Kirk through the bars, it was fierce.

"They're telling the truth," Anakin said to her before speaking to Kirk. He stared at him for a beat, then eyes narrowed curiously, his brow furrowing just a little. "You don't belong here."

Funny, Kylo Ren said the same thing.

"We must find the owner of this…" Kirk held up the token lightsaber for them to see it.

Anakin's mouth fell open and he blinked, looking suddenly very boyish. The woman, Padme, was frowning.

"Anakin, I thought you said it was destroyed…"

"It was. I _know_ it was." 

He held up a scrap of metal, which sparked a little at its jagged edge. It was very close to the one in Kirk's hand, what was left of it anyway.

“Who are you?”

“Does everyone always just break their lightsabers ‘round here?" McCoy grumbled. "Look, we found it, okay? He says it's his, Jim, can't we just give it to him?"

Anakin's eyes lit up. "It would certainly help our current situation… Dooku wouldn't expect it..."

"We're here to _negotiate_ for Obi-Wan…" Padme murmured to him.

"We can still negotiate… aggressively," Anakin smirked. He moved nearer to the door, standing shoulder to shoulder with Padme. “Would you mind helping us out of here?”

“I’m afraid that’s… complicated,” Jim scratched at his cheek. “We come from a world very far away from this one and we have laws that forbid us from interfering.”

“Help us,” Anakin stated.

“It’s impossible, I’m sorry.”

“You _will_ open this door,” Anakin’s voice lowered in register.

Kirk blinked at him and shook his head No.

“Captain, I believe he is attempting telepathic persuasion,” Spock said with the closest thing to amusement Kirk had heard in awhile.

“Ani!” Padme looked at him.

Anakin sighed, his chin dipping with a frown. “Master Obi-Wan makes it seem so easy...”

Padme shook her head at Anakin and looked back to Kirk pleadingly. “I’m a Senator and I’ve been illegally captured by members of the Separatist Alliance. What they’re doing here is an act of war!”

These politics were beyond anything that Kirk could even begin understanding, let alone getting involved in. He sighed and looked apologetically to her.

“I’m sorry, Senator. My mission is greater than stopping any war here…”

“What I’d like to know is,” said Anakin, “who are you to decide that your mission and your regulations are more important than people’s lives or preventing war?”

There was an arrogance coming from Anakin that unsettled Kirk. It was the same arrogance he had in himself that he fought every day of his life as a starship captain. Kirk recognized in the boy the voice of a one-man-army, a hero’s delusion, and a dangerous naivete. 

Spock inched towards the cell, gripping the tricorder at his side. “Captain Kirk has singlehandedly saved more lives in his career than you could ever hope to comprehend. The regulations he upholds have been placed for the very purpose of saving the many at the expense of the few.”

“Spock, it’s fine,” Kirk waited for the Vulcan to catch his eye, and when he did, all it took was a look in their eyes to communicate that Jim was, in fact, fine. 

Spock seemed content and eased back again. It was so strange that the Vulcan seemed so irritated.

Anakin was frowning. “I also follow a sacred code that calls me to defend the galaxy and everyone in it. I don’t accept your regulations.”

“Then don’t,” Kirk said simply, as he would to any pouting child. He stepped back, motioning his friends into a huddle. 

The three Starfleet officers faced their backs to the cell, their heads together to confer at a whisper.

“It is probable that we have overshot our targeted point in time,” Spock said quietly. “We may have gone too far.”

“There’s one way to find out…” Kirk folded his arms. “Bones, can you get a bio scan of Anakin Skywalker? I want to be absolutely sure that hand wasn’t his. We might have misheard Kylo Ren about the name Luke, or Kylo Ren himself was mistaken.”

“Alright…” McCoy calmly approached the cell, switching on the medical tricorder.

“What are you doing?” Anakin said sharply.

“It’s a bio scanner,” McCoy said calmly. “Just getting a medical scan on ya…”

Anakin’s face was in the window of the door, and he was suddenly very calm and quiet. He didn’t put up a fight as McCoy’s tiny handheld bioscanner whirred in front of his face. And Kirk realized the young man’s eyes were on him. No, not on him, on the lightsaber in his hand. He remembered the telekinetic powers that Kylo Ren had and he gripped it tightly, meeting Anakin’s gaze with a warning shake of his head.

After only a minute or two, McCoy ambled back over to Jim’s side, moving in close to whisper. “Definite relation to both Kylo Ren and that hand of so-called Luke Skywalker… But it’s not an exact match. That’s not his hand, Jim.”

“What kind of relation?”

McCoy was looking at the readings on the tricorder. “Well… I’d say we’ve gone back two generations from Kylo Ren. These are his grandparents.”

“ _Grandparents_?” Kirk’s brows rose.

McCoy nodded with a little smirk. He had gotten a bio scan of the lovely senator as well. It would seem Anakin and Padme had more than a professional relationship, or would some day. Regardless, they now knew they were in the wrong place. 

“Then we did go back too far…” Jim sighed.

“There is a very real possibility that we could be trapped here, captain…” said Spock solemnly. “If the divergence in time is a few decades after today, then the altered time after that may no longer exist. Or, if we interfere too far, we will break the timeline even farther back.”

McCoy’s eyes were getting wider. “Is that why the Guardian hasn’t pulled us back yet? God, Jim, what if we’re stuck here?”

“Then there would be no reason to get irrationally emotional about the matter,” Spock said simply.

“Irrationally emotional?!” McCoy barked. “That would be the perfect time to get emotional, Mr. Spock!”

“If a situation called for a complete failure in competency, then I would defer to your vapid judgment, doctor, but until then I would find it extremely preferable if you were to shut your mouth.”

Spock, the perfectly logical Vulcan, was _seething_.

“Spock!” Jim gripped his arm tightly, which tore Spock’s fixed gaze away from the gaping doctor. The captain leaned in to whisper. “What’s wrong with you?”

Spock blinked rapidly, his chest rising and falling. “I… I have felt this before, Jim…”

“Felt what?” To see Spock shaken left the captain feeling the same.

“Oh, I see… I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me…” McCoy said softly, the fear and anger fading from his own features. “Jim, we must be so far back in time that Spock’s reverting to his ancestor’s feral behavior.”

“His... _what_?”

He was about to ask how such a thing could be possible, but he remembered suddenly that Vulcans shared a higher consciousness. Spock was at all times interlinked with the rest of his people. Now he connected to a barbaric civilization, one with emotions so high is was self destructive.

“This… happened before?” Jim looked between them, feeling for the first time that his two closest friends shared a secret without him. “Doesn’t matter. Will you be okay, Spock?”

“Yes, captain. As long as I maintain awareness of the effect that this time is having on me, I can control it.”

Jim had every faith that he could, but such control always took a toll on his friend.

“I hate to interrupt,” Anakin spoke up. “But are you going to help us escape or not?”

“Please,” Padme was practically cheek to cheek with Anakin in the window of the cell door. “Our friend needs our help. He may be in one of these cells, if he’s still alive. I intend to negotiate for his escape, but I don’t know if they’ll accept it… The Separatists who locked us in here have been trying to kill us. You must help us.”

The pleading look in her eyes chewed guilt right through Kirk’s gut, and he felt the impulse to shoot the lock of their cell and let them out. But they had gotten there of their own accord, and to free them now would be interference.

“Something tells me you two will be able to find a way to make it cozy in there…” Jim smiled a little. 

“But Jim!” McCoy whispered.

Kirk felt like the air was suddenly knocked out of his lungs and he landed face first onto dirt, wind howling violently around him. They were back on the planet of the Guardian of Time, he still had the token in his hand. 

“Jim!” McCoy was pulling him to his feet. “What if you left Anakin and Padme to die?!”

“They have children and grandchildren, Bones… They’ll get out of that mess on their own… If Luke Skywalker is their son, then we at least know the timeline is intact up until the point that he lost his hand.”

“How can we possibly know anything in this God forsaken shit-storm of a situation?!” McCoy was throwing his arms in the air now.

Spock was calmly brushing the dirt off of himself. 

“ _Time… is crumbling…_ ” said the Guardian. His usually booming voice sounded weaker. “ _There are only fragments left._ ”

“Alright, Gentlemen, let’s get it right this time, because we may not have another chance!” Kirk shouted over the storm. “Spock! Get the readings on the token’s crystal… We want to find the point in time right before it was removed. We need to go before the shatter point, where time is still stable. Bones, get the biological readings of the hand!”

“ _Time… is fading… choose carefully…_ ” The Guardian’s mouth flashed dimly, the images flashing within its maw. Glimpses of war, storms, binary sunsets.

They stared at the passing images, and on Spock’s call, they jumped.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The triumvirate find themselves in a cloud city.

When they stepped out into a new time, Captain Kirk’s feet caught on something solid and he stumbled forward, landing hard on his hands and knees. He tripped on a body. It was clad in white armor, a massive white helmet on top and a black hole blasted into its chest. There were identical bodies strewn in the pristine, white corridor.

Kirk straightened up and tugged down his gold shirt. “I’m beginning to see a pattern here…” he huffed.

“You mean you falling on your face or the excess of dead bodies every time we arrive?” McCoy said through tight lips.

“Clearly war is a universal constant in any galaxy,” Spock observed.

They were alone (aside from the corpses), and though it was quiet where they stood, they could hear the continuing blasts of exchanged fire. The battle was still going on somewhere. Kirk drew his phaser, still set on stun, his friends following suit.

“Alright, gentlemen, we can’t waste any time here…”

They were already at work with their tricorders.

“I have a match, Captain,” said Spock. “Identical energy readings to the token lightsaber.”

“I have a match, too, Jim…” McCoy glanced up from his tricorder, a brow quirked ominously. “Luke Skywalker’s here somewhere… in two places… And so is Anakin Skywalker.”

“What do you mean in two places? Two Lukes and two Anakins?”

“One Anakin, two Luke’s…” McCoy shrugged helplessly. “Those are the readings I’m getting. The DNA signature of Luke Skywalker is right below is… and it’s also a dozens of meters that way.”

“Malfunction?”

McCoy slapped the side of his tricorder with his hand and shook his head. “Maybe all this time skipping is fritzing the tricorder…”

“Spock?”

“My tricorder is functioning at optimal capacity, captain. While the doctor is reading two Luke Skywalkers, I am reading only one token lightsaber. That is, excluding the one in your hand.”

“That’s good enough for me. The Luke Skywalker with the lightsaber is where we need to go. Lead the way, gentlemen…”

With their tricorders in hand, they began walking shoulder to shoulder along the curved, white corridor. It was difficult not to look at the dead bodies, the armored soldiers with no insignias or emblems. Kirk wondered who was under each helmet.

“ _Hey! Stop right there!_ ”

A modulated voice stopped them in their tracks. When they turned they were faced with four of those armored soldiers, all of them aiming rifle-type weapons and bearing down on them in an instant. Kirk was the closest and they grabbed him first, the ends of their weapons jabbing into the back of his skull as they forcefully pulled him away from the other two.

“ _Drop your weapons! Cloud City is under martial law of the Empire!_ ”

“We’re not citizens here…” Kirk grunted out, and had no choice but to drop his phaser when the soldier struck him in the face with the butt of his weapon.

“ _That’s your problem, pal…_ ” the soldier said.

“Look, we’re not resisting…” Kirk could taste blood in his mouth. “You don’t need to arrest us…”

“ _You’re not special, we’re rounding up everyone in this place by order of Lord Vader._ ”

“Maybe we can talk about this…” Kirk said nonchalantly, in spite of their expressionless faces.

“ _Move!_ ” the soldier shoved him hard and forced the three of them to start walking.

One of the armored soldiers had taken both tricorders, turning them over in his hands and looking curiously at them as they marched along.

“ _Major, what are these?_ ”

“ _How should I know?_ "

“ _Hey, what are these?_ ” he held it up for them to see. “ _Are they weapons?_ ”

“More like scientific equipment…” McCoy said flatly. “Do you people even _have_ science here? Or do you just spend all day shooting at each other all the time?”

“Evidently, a great deal of time is spent in being shot _at_ ,” Spock said pointedly, his snark almost making Kirk smile.

“Let’s be fair, Mr. Spock…” Kirk pursed his lips a little. “It must be pretty difficult seeing through those helmets. It’s not their fault they probably shot each other and didn’t know it…”

“ _I’m really tired of those jokes about our aim,_ ” said one soldier. “ _I was top of my class in target practice!_ ”

“I didn’t know there were classes for being a target,” Kirk said innocently.

“ _Will you three scum be quiet?_ ” growled the leading soldier. “ _No one would ask any questions if we ‘accidentally’ shot you…_ ” he canted his head suddenly, a gloved hand touching at the side of his wide helmet. He seemed to be listening. His blank face then snapped to his comrades. “ _Calrissian and the Princess have escaped!_ ”

And that was their opportunity. The soldiers were distracted for just an instant. Captain Kirk immediately threw himself into one man, knocking the wind clear out of him and the weapon out of his hand, meanwhile Spock slipped a hand between the plates of armor where a neck was expected to be found, and his guard buckled at the knees, clattering to the ground. McCoy, for his part, hit the deck and let Kirk throw himself at a second soldier.

The skirmish was short. Spock easily obtained a phaser from the unconscious one and fired a shot at each of the remaining soldiers. They all collapsed into a heap, and Kirk was stumbling to his feet, breathless, his hair fallen over his brow, and generally bruised from turning himself into a human wrecking ball against fully armored enemies. It would have been a lie to say the fight wasn’t fun, though.

“Well, it’s a good thing we don’t have to worry about hiding the bodies…” Kirk huffed, rubbing at his shoulder with a wince. He definitely bruised something. “Seems like these troopers are common decor…”

McCoy was studying his tricorder again. “Jim, one of those Luke Skywalker readings is going beyond the tricorder’s sensor range… He’s leaving.”

“Then let’s hope he’s not the one we need to find… What about the other one?”

“Still somewhere below us.”

Kirk waved them to follow and the three took off at a brisk jog through the endless corridors. Every hall looked the same. They would go down a short flight of stairs, turn a corner. All the same lights and doors. Finally they reached a hallway with windows, and they could see the fiery glow of the sun setting behind clouds… Clouds that they were currently suspended in.

“It really is a _Cloud City_ …” Kirk said with awe. “Hopefully we won’t have any need to go very far… It would be an ordeal to fly a ship here even if we found one.”

“I’d just be happy if we could find an elevator…” McCoy wheezed.

The captain didn’t wait for anyone to catch their breath. They were running again, wending their way through the city that was strewn with bodies and debris. It was a ghost town. There was an open door, an orange light ebbing through that contrasted the stark white interior of the rest of the place. Kirk ran inside and found himself looking into a room full of piles of metal and trash. 

There was an incinerator in the middle, a conveyor belt leading into it. Small aliens that were roughly the size of human children were putting boxes and piles of metal scraps onto the conveyor belt, some of them with tusks, hairy jowels and heavy leather gloves and uniforms. They didn’t pay much attention to the three Starfleet officers who walked in.

Kirk glanced between his friends, then looked to the small aliens. “Ah… excuse me?”

They kept working.

“Excuse me!” he said louder, in case if they couldn’t hear him over the roar of the furnace.

One of them turned to look at him, tiny eyes peering up beneath what looked like a permanent grimace. “This area is off limits!”

“We won’t stay,” Kirk said. “We’re travelers passing through and we keep getting lost in this place. We’re trying to, uh... Evacuate with everyone else.” He assumed they were evacuated and not all arrested.

“Then you are going the wrong way!” grumbled the alien. “You need to be going outward, not inward, for the landing platforms. There is an elevator down the right corridor from here. Now go away, we have work to do! Go away! I have spoken!”

It was as though Kirk, Spock, and McCoy ceased to exist when the alien returned to work, hauling scraps onto the moving conveyor belt. By Kirk’s lead, out they went, taking a right and reached the elevator that the alien had mentioned. They stepped inside and found themselves staring at the buttons. The dozens and dozens of buttons. On both sides. There weren’t even markings that could have been numbers or letters, just a lot of lights.

“Well, Spock…” said McCoy. “Any theories on which red button or white button means down?”

Spock quirked a single brow, his chin lifting and his head cocking a little as if considering the challenge. He studied it silently.

“Time isn’t just ticking, Spock, it’s literally fading…” Kirk said calmly.

“It would be reasonable to assume that any button located on the lower portion of the panel would take us downward, the probability being 1 in—”

“Just push a button, Mr. Spock,” said Kirk with infinite patience.

And Spock did. They began to move, shadows passing behind them in the elevator shaft. They at least knew they were moving downward.

When the elevator doors opened, they stepped into an empty control room. What it controlled and what the console of countless buttons did, they were left to guess. On the opposite end of the room was a vast window that looked out to an even larger, almost infinite chamber. It extended to what seemed to be the walls of the city, a sheer curved wall of panels and lights.

The three Starfleet officers walked cautiously into the room, making note of the doors on each side and the exit they had come from. Both Spock and McCoy had their eyes on their tricorders, moving slowly towards wherever the sensors pointed. Captain Kirk followed them to the window. When he looked out, there was a catwalk extended out over the bottomless base of the chamber, and dancing across it, a flurry of two bars of light. One red. One blue.

“The signal for the token lightsaber is very close, Captain,” Spock said distractedly as he continued to look at his tricorder.

“Uh, Spock…”

“Jim, I got a reading on Luke Skywalker’s DNA, he’s definitely close…”

“Bones…”

“And a weaker reading on Anakin Skywalker…” McCoy went on.

Neither of them were looking up from their tricorders as Jim watched the lightsabers down below them. They must have been five stories down from this control room. There was a young man wielding the blue lightsaber, and he wasn’t winning the fight. He was being continually driven back by a tall, black armored figure with a billowing cape. The red lightsaber was brandished with obvious experience, and the younger man was getting sloppy, erratic. That had to be Luke Skywalker with the blue lightsaber.

“Spock! Bones! _Right there!_ ” He slapped a hand on each of his friends’s shoulders as he stood between them, turning them towards the window.

They both looked up in time to see the young man knocked in his back, the red lightsaber inches from his face.

“Jim…” McCoy breathed. “He’s gonna die!”

McCoy was ready to move, but planted himself back at the window when Luke struck back and not only got to his feet, but dealt a blow to the armored one, sparks flying from impact. The dark one was obviously enraged and barreled forward faster, even chopping away pieces of the structure around them.

“Come on, kid!” McCoy was cheering and sweating.

One upward sweep of the red lightsaber, and Luke’s hand flew from his wrist, along with his blue lightsaber. Both fell down into the endless pit. Though the walls were soundproof, Kirk was sure he could hear Luke’s screams as he collapsed, clutching the stump where his hand was.

“Jim, we gotta help him…” McCoy was gripping the captain’s bicep so hard he was cutting off circulation there. 

The dark figure was standing over him, lightsaber at his side like an executioner. Yet he didn’t strike Luke down. The boy was able to inch away, farther on the perilous scaffolding with only one hand and the wind whipping around him. Whatever the dark one was saying, they couldn’t hear.

Jim couldn’t take it anymore. “We need to get down there.”

He dashed for the first door, which led to a corridor. Spock followed close beside him, phaser drawn. McCoy was two steps behind. Kirk came to a skidding halt when he nearly ran past a set of stairs, and he followed them down, and down, and down. They went three levels. This had to be where the fighting was.

When they reached a door, Kirk hit the only button beside it and was relieved when it opened. The wind howled through, cold and gusting, but it meant they had reached the chamber. Kirk charged out onto the walkway, a thin, elbow-high railing the only thing to keep them from falling to their deaths.

It ran along a smooth, curved wall and as they followed it, the bend revealed the catwalk that they had viewed from above. The rails had been sliced clean in places, they could see the burn marks of lighsabers. But there was no Luke Skywalker. Only the dark clad figure standing at the end of it, his back towards them as the seemed to gaze at the abyss. There was only one place Luke could have gone.

Kirk slowed to a halt, the token lightsaber gripped tightly in one hand as the other drew his phaser.

“ _You do not belong here…_ ” The voice that rose from the dark figure was so deep it reverberated through the wind and chilled Kirk to the bone.

The dark one turned and faced them, his black cape whipping behind him like wings, large lifeless lenses for eyes as black as the rest of the angular mask. He no longer had the red lightsaber drawn. Heavy steps carried him slowly towards them, and as he neared, they could hear him breathing. In… Out… In… Out… Steady. Artificial. Constant. His left shoulder was still smoking with burning circuitry.

“Cyborg…?” Spock asked quietly, obviously fascinated.

The dark one stopped, his mask facing them and impossible to read. “ _I remember you…_ ” he seemed to whisper, his bellowing voice modulated. “ _Captain James Kirk._ ”

“I think you have us at a disadvantage…” Kirk spoke calmly, but he swallowed hard.

“ _How right you are._ ”

“Jim…” McCoy needed only to glance down at his tricorder. “That’s Anakin Skywalker.”

“ _Anakin Skywalker is dead. I am Darth Vader._ ”

“ _You’re_ Vader…?” Kirk looked to the howling abyss. “You… killed your own son?”

The cyborg’s breathing never even hitched and he extended one gloved hand. “ _Surrender_ _the lightsaber that you denied me on Geonosis._ ”

“Why? It looks like you have a perfectly functional one…” Kirk said calmly, though he gripped the lightsaber tighter.

“ _Perhaps you would be more generous with information on how you have obtained time travel. Such a capability would serve the Empire well._ ”

“For all you know we just age very slowly,” Kirk said innocently, though his gut was telling him to move.

“ _Your very presence creates a disturbance in the Force. It reveals many things—including your fear. It will not be difficult to make you speak. Of course… I shall only need_ one _of you._ ”

The crimson beam of his lightsaber screamed to life.

Yes, it was time to move. He fired his phaser, steady beam on stun. The lightsaber deflected it, the colliding energy sending back a disruption that made the phaser instantly hot in Kirk’s hand, forcing him to drop it as it scalded him. It tumbled down into the pit. Spock remembered Kylo Ren, however. He fired a wide beam stun towards Vader.

It knocked him onto his knee with a growl, sparks flying from his chest and limbs, a grating screech emitting from his breathing. He was crippled for the moment and that was their chance. 

They ran.

They ran back the way they came, even though there was no knowing just where they could run to. They could bump into stormtroopers at any moment.

“We need to get this lightsaber where it belongs!” Kirk said breathlessly as he ran.

“Logic dictates that the lightsaber must be sent to where it was last seen, Jim,” said Spock.

“You mean back down in that bottomless pit?” McCoy gasped out.

“Precisely, doctor.”

“Then why couldn’t we have just dropped it while we were there?!” McCoy practically screamed.

“There’s every reason to believe that Vader has telekinesis…” said Kirk. “He would have snatched it.”

They ran up the multiple flights stairs and found themselves back in the control room, where there was only silence. Kirk stopped for a moment to catch his breath, looking behind them. Spock was at the window, looking down to the scaffold.

“Vader isn’t there, captain…” Spock said ominously.

McCoy was leaning back against the wall, dragging the back of his hand over his damp brow. “How can we know that Anakin—I mean Vader—isn’t supposed to have it in the first place?”

Spock looked to McCoy. “Because without interference from us… He had cut off Luke Skywalker’s hand, allowing said token to fall. We can infer that the rift in time is located somewhere in that pit where the hand and the lightsaber had fallen through…”

“So…” Kirk huffed. “So, we need to throw it down there without Vader getting to it… Easy. I’ll distract him.” He tossed the lightsaber at Spock, who caught it.

“Like hell you will,” McCoy growled. “He’s a monster, Jim!”

“He was just a kid when we first met him, Bones, he’s as human as we are.”

“If we succeed, doctor, the captain will be in no danger. We need to move.”

“Try that door,” Kirk pointed to the second exit that they had not yet explored.

Spock went ahead, and after a moment’s pause of pulsing temple veins, McCoy followed the Vulcan. Kirk took a deep breath, trusting his friends to complete their task more than he had trust in himself to avoid the wrath of Lord Vader—who remembered Kirk leaving him behind in a prison cell some years ago.

* * *

It turned out that the second door of that control room led to even more winding corridors and stairs with doors that were locked and impossible to open, even with a phaser blast or Spock’s brute Vulcan strength. So they pressed on, even though McCoy was so out of breath he was beginning to see spots. He was a doctor, not a gazelle!

“Spock…” he gasped out. “Spock! Wait a minute…”

The Vulcan stopped and looked to him, his chest rising and falling rapidly in the first indication that he too was out of breath. “We must keep moving…”

“We can’t just leave Jim alone against Anakin! You’ve seen what those _Jedi_ types can do!”

“The Anakin Skywalker that we had met in their past is not the same individual who is integrated with those cybernetics. He may possess the DNA, but that is not Anakin Skywalker.”

“I can’t disagree there… If there was anyone worse than that Kylo Ren, it’s him…”

Spock did not seem interested in the debate. He started to run again.

“Damn it, Spock!” It took everything McCoy had left to push his legs into a forward motion.

“If we are to save the captain and keep his diversion from being in vain, then we must discard this lightsaber!” Spock was not slowing down.

* * *

_Come on, Spock… Come on, Bones…_

In theory, when the token lightsaber gets dropped into that pit, the timeline would be restored and the Guardian would return them. Or, they would miss their opportunity and be stuck in this time and place forever. Which did not seem very appealing considering the indications of fascism and evil war lords.

He moved slowly, cautiously through the corridors. They all looked the same. Every panel was identical. The few markings that looked like writing were no help at all, since he couldn’t read it. He was certain, however, that he wasn’t going in circles. Well… _pretty_ certain. He had a _good feeling_ he wasn’t going in circles. Then he thought he heard it. He stopped and listened. Everything was silent.

The breathing. Hollow. Even. And it was right behind him.

Kirk ducked and rolled, but in the time it took him to get back on his feet, his body was slammed to the wall, back against metal. Vader was on the other side of the room, a gloved hand curled at the level of his waist. He did not even bother to activate his lightsaber as he walked towards Kirk, arrogance oozing from the faceless cyborg. Kirk felt rather like a bug facing a very big, black boot heel.

“ _Your friends will not get far, captain… I have ordered my stormtroopers to kill anyone left in the city. No exceptions._ ”

“I find that hard to believe…” Kirk grunted as he tried his strength against the invisible power that pinned him, every limb and body to the wall. At least he wasn’t choking this time.

“ _You doubt my sincerity?_ ” There seemed to be amusement in those deep vocals.

“Not at all… I believe you, Vader. I just find it hard to understand how you were the same man who lectured me about the importance of saving lives… or breaking rules for the greater good…”

“ _I am not the same man._ ” The edge returned to his tone.

“What does the senator think? Does she know about this or is she the one who ordered the martial law on this city? What was her name? Padme—”

Now he was choking.

“ _I will enjoy torturing you, Captain Kirk. You will tell me how you have traveled through time._ ”

When Kirk tried to speak, he could not push the words through his collapsed windpipe. He felt the Force loosen its grip, to allow him to speak. He huffed for air, coughing painfully.

“I… I’ll tell you…”

“ _Speak. Or die._ ”

“First… you need… a really big sling shot—”

Vertigo punched him through his guts and he landed hard onto dirt. Spock and McCoy teetered on their feet over him as if they had been shoved hard, Kirk meanwhile in a heap between them. He was coughing and feeling as though he had a bad case of the bends.

He rolled onto his back with a long groan and squinted up at the red sky. There was no wind, a few stars peeking through. They were at the mouth of the Guardian of Time.

“ _All is as it was before…_ ” The Guardian announced strongly.

Uhura knelt beside Kirk, helping him to his feet.

“Are you alright, captain? What happened?”

“That’s a good question…” Kirk rasped and looked to Spock and McCoy.

Spock stood placidly with his hands behind his back and McCoy mirrored it.

“Easy as pie, Jim… We just chucked the ol’ token lightsaber into the pit.”

Spock’s brow lifted, his lips parting.

“Uh huh…” Kirk looked between them, his gaze settling on his first officer. “Easy as pie, Spock?”

“If the expression ‘easy as pie’ also includes a copious amount of shouting and foul language from chief medical officers, then it was, in fact, _easy as pie_.”

Now McCoy was frowning, his large eyes slowly turning to Spock. “Y’know, Mr. Spock, I was gonna let bygones be bygones…”

Kirk sensed there was more to it, and he was in too much pain and waning adrenaline to let this go further.

“Ah, lieutenant…” Kirk looked to Uhura. “Contact the _Enterprise_ to stand by for beam up…”

“Yes, sir…” She stepped away with her communicator.

Kirk rubbed at his throat, which had gotten quite a beating today, and he approached his friends with a discreet whisper.

“Okay, gentlemen, what really happened?”

“Nothing happened, captain,” Spock said simply.

“He yelled at me with the closest thing to cussing I’ve ever heard outta his Vulcan mouth!” McCoy seethed.

“Doctor, really…” Spock was frowning now.

“You regressed badly back there, Mr. Spock, and you can’t deny it!” McCoy kept his voice down, but his eyes were ready to pop out of his skull. “If I didn’t know any better you were ready to turn on that lightsaber thingamajig and chop me like butter!”

Now Kirk had a clearer image of the scenario. Spock and Bones, shouting at each other in a foreign city in some heated moral debate. He could already hear the argument in his head, like two angry angels on his shoulders.

It made him smile softly and he put a hand on each of their shoulders. 

“I don’t know about you two, but I could use a hot meal and a nap…”

“And a tall drink,” McCoy sighed.

“I think it would be quite fascinating to observe that other galaxy,” said Spock, his gaze returning to the Guardian, whose mouth showed nothing but the landscape behind. “The knowledge we could attain would be immeasurable.”

Kirk followed his gaze. “It would…” he agree quietly. “But I have no intention of returning any time soon, let alone at the risk of unraveling the timeline. Again. Besides, you have your tricorder readings. That will be enough data to study for decades, wouldn’t it?”

“Indeed, Captain.”

“If we ever do return, we’ll have to steer clear of Skywalkers,” McCoy sighed.

“ _Enterprise_ ready to beam up the landing party, Captain,” Uhura said with a lovely smile.

“Very good, Lieutenant… Energize.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is SO MUCH MORE that can be done in this crossover. Hopefully I can write more, either as a continuation of this or a new story. I hate myself for not finding a way to get Obi-Wan in this, but I needed to streamline this and keep it simple because Life isn't letting me write anything too long or complex right now.
> 
> I'll just have to think of another way for them to meet my favorite Jedi. ;D


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